1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system in which a host device and a printer are connected via a communication medium and a print job produced in said host device is transferred to said printer to execute printing, a method for controlling the system, and a computer-readable memory medium which stores a control program for the system.
2. Related Background Art
Heretofore, as an output device for performing output processing of a host device such as a computer or a facsimile device, there has been a printer having a plurality of paper output places such as finishers and mailboxes. Also, there is a printer having a paper output place capable of stacking 500 sheets or more.
In case of a printer having a plurality of paper output places, a user (or an application of the host device) can specifically designate which paper output place he or she likes to output to. Also, if he or she does not particularly specifically designate, the host device side or printer side automatically outputs to any paper output place. Also, even in case that he or she specifically designate a paper output place, if the paper output place is filled with output papers, there is also a printer that automatically outputs to another paper output place.
There is a printer that is provided with an output paper stack quantity detection sensor at each paper output place, and there is also a case of being able to recognize whether or not papers output to the paper output place remains. In that case, if a user removes the papers placed on the paper output place, it can be recognized by the above output paper stack quantity detection sensor.
Also, there are many cases that a plurality of host computers uses a printer in common in a network environment. In that case, it is not unusual that they use a plurality of printers in common.
As the above, the paper output system itself of the printer has become complex differently from old one having a single paper output place. Also, if, in addition to that there are pluralities of hosts and printers in an environment, it is designed such as to perform some automatic control on outputting papers, there is the possibility that a user can not find which printer of a plurality of printers the output result which he or she has surely output, or even in case that he or she knows which printer, he or she forgot or can not find which paper output place it has been output to. In that case, there is the problem that hunting up the aimed printed result requires the more labor the more the system becomes complex.
Also, in view of the above problem, since printers can at least recognize the paper output place of the output destination of each print job, it may be possible to store this information in a memory, and inform the paper output destination in response to a user's inquiry or the like. However, for example, if information on all output jobs is maintained for any length of time, it requires infinite memory for maintaining. This is quite not a realistic method.